Bloggers Friday Follows: Eric Ries

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 01-22-10

If you’re on Twitter, you know of the tradition of the Friday Follow where you share who you follow so that others might benefit in the same way. I think the same think should apply to blogging. So I occasionally post a Bloggers Friday Follows of interesting bloggers that I enjoy reading, and enjoy learning from. So far, I’ve covered the following lean bloggers:

Today I turn my attention to a different kind of lean blogger, Eric Ries and his Startup Lessons Learned. Eric is an experienced entrepreneur also with venture capital experience, and has popularized the idea of the “lean startup.”

Obviously, I have been interested in lean for a long time. I have also been involved in startups, as practitioner, advisor, investor, teacher, and coach, even acting as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Lehigh University. I’m fascinated by how lean concepts can apply to entrepreneurship, and did write one blog post on the subject.

Eric is out on the road talking about and writing about lean in startups. His experience and therefore perspective is decidedly software and Silicon Valley, and as a result I’m sure the catalog sales business, clothing startup, and local restaurant might read it and think “huh??”. But the lessons apply to all, you might just have to think a little harder about the application in your own space, which quite frankly is good for you to do anyway.

I’m not going to summarize all of Eric’s points here. You can read his blog which I am encouraging you to do, watch a video of a speech at Stanford, or even read Mark Graban’s summary from talk that Eric gave.

Here are some posts by Eric that I particularly recommend:

The words entrepreneur and startup have been tossed around quite a bit the past few years, from Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek convincing everyone to quit their job and become an entrepreneur to everyone on Twitter who has a single affiliate link and has made $10 calling themselves an entrepreneur. But I believe a true startup is building something. It might not be a product, it could be software, or a service. But building something means there is something left when you are done. I believe Eric’s Lessons Learned can help you build something that works.

I hope other bloggers contribute to the idea of the Blogger Friday Follow. I don’t care what day it is, but who do you read, and why.

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